


Curing the Soul

by LilydaleXF



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s09e20 The Truth (Part 2), F/M, Hope, MSR, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 18:17:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8811169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilydaleXF/pseuds/LilydaleXF
Summary: Picking up the morning after "The Truth" ends, Mulder and Scully spend some time in their motel room. For as few clothes as they are wearing, they sure talk a lot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Anjou for helping to make this story better.

Mulder's only had time to step out of the shower, wrap a towel around his waist, and stand near the sink before the bathroom door opens and Scully's arms are wrapped around him. It's so wonderfully absurd, he thinks – this dowdy motel room, their lives in limbo, and all this affection.

He shakes his head slightly and sprays water droplets onto her. "Couldn't wait another minute, huh Scully?"

"I missed you, Mulder."

He chuckles warmly and rubs his hands a short length up and down her back. They slide easily – she's only wearing the slick white robe she had on the night before.

At his minor display of amusement, she tightens her hold on him and says, "No, I mean it. I really missed you."

He stops moving his hands and presses them against her back in hopeful imprint, as much for her as for himself.

"It was horrible, Mulder. While you were away my heart never hurt so much."

Scully has never said anything to him approaching something like that, so he's not sure what to say. He says nothing and slowly rubs her back again. It unexpectedly opens her like a genie bottle.

She continues, "I was everywhere familiar – the office, home – but you weren't there. The phone rang but never with you on the other end, your voice was only a memory. The ghost of you was everywhere, though, and part of you was there in William. Sometimes I wished that I was the one who was away, the one who didn't have reminders at every turn. Some nights, Mulder, some nights I couldn't even sleep in my own bed."

"I always told you the couch is where it's at."

She chokes out an honest laugh. "You and that leather couch."

"But your bed is a close second." He adds more softly, "It's ironic, all I did was try to find somewhere with a reminder, somewhere I could always turn and see you without you being there. But I never could. I was lost, Scully."

"We're a mess, Mulder." Her words are muffled against his chest, which she's turned her face more against.

"Not anymore, Sweetheart."

He swoops her up suddenly, one arm under her bent knees and one arm behind her back. He carries her into the bedroom while she squeals in what sounds more like surprise and delight than annoyance and horror. He flops her down on the bed, in the process causing his towel to accidentally slip off and making him lose his balance so he has to brace his arms on the bed on either side of her.

"Mulder!" she mock admonishes before they fall into silence.

They stare at one another, his hulking frame propped above hers.

"Hi," he whispers.

"Hi," she replies.

She squints her eyes up at him, like she's testing what she's seeing, then she pokes him in the shoulder. Forcefully. Twice.

"If you poke me in the stomach next, I'll laugh for you like Poppin' Fresh."

"Oh Mulder," she says, her fingers now moved up as they dance over his lips. "I missed you."

She's smiling, but it's a sad smile that's not reaching her blue eyes.

"I'm here," he consoles. "With you. I'm here."

"I know," she affirms as her hand drops from his face. "But even now, I knew you were just behind a door. I knew you would walk out and I would see you in five minutes. But still...."

"Still, you couldn't see me?"

"Sort of."

"You _could_ see me? This is an amazing x-ray vision development."

She swats playfully at him. He shifts his left hand into her fiery hair, where it's fanned out on the bed. It's longer than he remembers, but its softness is a burned-in feeling.

"It wasn't just not being able to see you. It's like--" she pauses in thought. "Do you remember those haunted houses they had at Halloween when we were kids? The ones parents would make, at the school gym or in someone's living room, where you'd walk down some dark hall for a few scares?"

He scrunches up his face. Is he about to be some kind of ghoul? "I went to some," he offers cautiously. He's lowered himself onto her now, his arms propping his chest and head above her while his lower half rests against her.

"There was one dad, some father of one of Melissa's friends at school, who had a station along the hall where he would set up a row of bowls hidden behind little curtains, napkins he'd clipped up somehow. We'd stick our hands into these bowls – somehow we knew what we were supposed to be feeling – maybe there were little signs. Eyeballs were peeled grapes. Brains were cold heaps of spaghetti. That kind of thing."

"You lived a much cooler childhood than I did, Scully."

"Got me interested in piles of extracted body parts, at least."

He has never heard her reference this memory even remotely. He grins and observes, "A little pathologist is born."

She grins back, but then it fades as she continues talking. "I couldn't see what was in those bowls, and I knew it wasn't actually brains and eyeballs, but it was still creepy and disconcerting, that dissonance of sight and touch."

"Am I a creepy peeled eyeball grape in this scenario?"

"That is an unintended parallel of this story."

He rolls his eyes with a mock insulted air as she leans up and nips at his bare skin. "I like grapes," she says.

Before his suddenly flummoxed mind can decide between saying "then let's devour each other" and skipping words altogether to get to the devouring, she speaks again. Her voice pulls him back centered, just like always.

"So when I was here, waiting in bed, I could hear you just past the door, and I could see your things, but I couldn't feel you."

"Was I really there?"

"Yeah. Was it really you? Could I trust what some senses sensed but others couldn't confirm?" She shakes her head in a quick back and forth as her eyes flutter in a sort of disgusted eye roll. "It's silly."

He looks her in the eye. She looks clearly back.

"Hey Scully," he whispers.

"Hmm?" she exudes more than speaks.

"I'm here," he also barely speaks as his body collapses slow and sure the rest of the way onto her, his head coming to rest next to hers with their mouths near each other's ears. Her hands had already worked their way to his hips, and now they're snaking a path around his back. He doesn't need a tattoo, he has her.

"I'm not used to this, Mulder," she says in what sounds like an apology.

He wishes he knew what "this" is.

"Me?" he asks out loud.

"In a way. This kind of needing."

"Well, Scully, I'm not used to it either." He feels her tense, taking his words as an indictment of her feelings. He immediately drops a kiss near her temple and clarifies what he meant. "I'm not used to feeling it either."

"Do you," she stutters to a stop before starting again. "Do you think we'll get used to it?"

He doesn't know and tells her so. "But I do think that we'll learn to trust our senses again and that it's OK to need for now."

"Maybe need forever."

"I'd take forever with you, Scully."

They relax into each other, quiet. Her hands return to slowly moving over him. He kisses her face again.

"Mulder?" she finally says.

"Hmm?"

"You're not wearing any clothes."

He smiles. "No, no I am not."

She wonders, "Do we have to leave this room today?"

"No, no we do not."

Though they do leave the room, later, but only briefly out of base necessity.

They hold hands on the walk to the diner and brazenly press their legs together under the table. It has a large green alien head painted on it. "It should be grey," he whispers to her, which prompts her to lift their already clasped hands and brush his fingers against her lips as she leans over the phony alien and kisses his mouth while they're out in a dingy booth at a diner in Roswell. He makes fun of her wilted salad ("It should be green," he says), and she steals most of his milkshake, and their legs are tangled, and they don't stop talking, except when she kisses him again, and they feel it all as the rest of their lives.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is cobbled from Oscar Wilde, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ :  
> "Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."


End file.
